I must be genetically predisposed to veganism because I genuinely don’t like cheese or bacon very much.
Still really like lamb and chicken though, so 🤷
When I first saw this meme, I was a vegan… Now I’m a vegetarian
Listen, I’m going to cast it into the fire, sure.
But then it’s going to get all goopy and crispy and I’m going to pull it back out again to eat it.
Dairy is the most challenging thing to give up. There are good alternatives - particularly when they’re made of nuts and seeds that have been fermented traditionally - but they’re good in their own way, don’t expect them to be the same.
The stuff made out of almost pure coconut oil is universally disappointing, and coconut is arguably not vegan given the environmental footprint and resulting animal endangerment.
I’m lactose intolerant and even for lil old vegan me is difficult to avoid the seductive siren song of cheese.
From my experience, there is no good Vegan cheese. Daiyo cheese is awful.
I mean, Daiyo is an example of the artificial-basically-mostly-coconut-oil cheeze I mentioned previously. Most stuff that you can find in the average grocery store is going to suck. Have you tried anything along the lines of, say, this almost award-winning plant-based cheese? Stuff like that is way better, but again, unique. Don’t expect it to be the same, although things may be changing soon since people have figured out how to get one of the key dairy proteins from non-animal sources.
There’s also homemade stuff, which varies. It’s pretty easy to make super creamy mac and cheese with plant-based sources only, for instance.
One of my close friends went vegan right around the pandemic beginning, when everything first started shutting down. Our local bar shut down the day of St Patrick’s day so we invited him over to our place instead for shitty beer with green food dye (it was 3 of us total and we worked in close proximity daily, AND we were very pro-mask)
He used it as an opportunity to introduce us to a vegan version of the cheesy spinach and artichoke dip from like Applebees/Chilis/insert old people restaurant here, but it was made with cashews.
It took him an hour but OH MY LAWD my husband and I still talk about that dip to this day as non-vegans. Better than anything we’ve ordered at a restaurant. We tell everyone about that shit.
Damn that sounds tasty. People hate plant-based food, until they try good plant-based food.
I’ve had some good vegan cheese, and I’ve had bad real cheese, but only one of them cost 3.50 for a pound
Something is better than nothing. “I could never be a vegetarian/vegan because of bacon” “Ok, then eat vegetarian AND also eat bacon then?”
flexitarian is the way to go first: my understanding is thats its more controlled, not everyday (maybe even only to special occations) eating of meat
my understanding is thats its more controlled, not everyday (maybe even only to special occations) eating of meat
IS IT???
I thought flexitarian was someone who can perform very flexible oral sex. 🤯
Flexual intercourse?
🎵 When I get that feeling, I need flexual healing🎵
No, I think that is a yoga cunnilingist or a pilates fellator.
just because you don’t always eat meat, doesn’t mean you need to pick a label for it
flexitarian is a ridiculous term, essentially everyone eats vegetarian or vegan foods sometimes
Someone who cuts most meat out of their diet is closer to a vegetarian than they are to the average diet. But saying they are vegetarian most of the time is going to upset a lot of people.
they’re still just an omnivore…
See, this is why the label exists, so we can say “I decided to cut my meat eating down to ecologically sustainable levels and support animal cruelty as little as possible while acknowledging that it’s a hard, nearly impossible thing to do on a budget to go even fully vegetarian, much less the reality that there’s so many many things going wrong in the world and not everyone can care about everything,” only with one word because the vegan dorks will cry about you being vegetarian too anyways.
if I dont have a label and a flag how can I tell everyone all aspects of myself as the main character in life?
Right? Anything is better then nothing
Cast it into the fire! Grill it!
Great, now I want halloumi…
I’ve never tried to convince anyone to take up veganism. Instead I avoid bringing it up at all cost because people get weird about it.
I actually went about it the other way. After seeing how bad dairy cows have it in the daily (I have in-laws who are dairy farmers) compared to cows raised for their flesh, I tried giving up just cheese, because it’s the one thing I told myself I could never do. I remember specifically saying to a lactose intolerant person that I would kill myself if I couldn’t eat cheese lol.
I can’t imagine eating cheese now, just the smell grossed me out. Like I was cleaning a plastic case that held cheddar (my partner’s) and I swear I couldn’t get the stink out of my fingers for hours. Even cow milk which I used to think was neural and creamy smells and tastes funky and cheesy.
Anyway, that’s all to illustrates how malleable tastes are. I think it must have been so hard to quit, because I remember what I said and did, but not how I felt. It’s like the urge just faded away. Like it was a temptation one moment, and then the next I forgot what I ever liked about it.
Anyway from there reducing and eliminating other products was easy, since I’d already fought the animal product boss battle.
There are better fake cheeses these days. It’s easier to give it up than it ever was. And tons of pizzerias now offer vegan cheese pizzas.
But honestly giving up beef alone should be commended, just for environmental/climate reasons.
I haven’t seen fake cheese that tastes good yet. A good tip is not to try to make vegan food taste like non vegan. Just enjoy the vegan foods as they are.
PS I’m trying the whole “give up beef” thing plus “be vegan one day of the week”.
A good tip is not to try to make vegan food taste like non vegan. Just enjoy the vegan foods as they are.
As a non vegan/vegetarian, I agree fully. By trying to replicate something else, the result often appears like a worse alternative.
I enjoy plenty of vegetarian and vegan foods, but don’t try and tell me that a plant based burger tastes the same as a normal burger, that just ruins the experience.
Play to your own strengths and don’t pretend to be something you are not, by doing that you reduce the stigma of vegan and vegetarian labels becoming associated with lower quality.
The concept of being vegetarian one day a week sounds like a brilliant idea, not sure that I would go the entire way to vegan across a full day, but a few vegan meals in a week wouldn’t be so hard.
While I understand your argument and fully agree that there are plenty of normal vegan dishes that hold there own, this point always comes from the non vegans 😅
Meat tastes good, and going vegan often means giving up favourite dishes that you grew up with. Having the mock alternatives means that when you do get that itch, you can still kind of scratch it. I also dont think it is fair to write them all of as inferior, there are some pretty incredible options these days.
No, having a mock alternative doesn’t sceatch the itch, it just reinforces how much better the real version of that thing was. While I haven’t tried them all, I have tried a lot due to recommendations by friends and every one has been like comparing turkey bacon to regular bacon. No, it isn’t even close.
I enjoy a lot of dishes that are vegetarian or vegan because they play to the strengths of their ingredients without pretending to be something else. Replicating the format is fine, many kinds of dishes share similar formats, but trying to compare it to something specific is a bad idea. I have had some vegsn sausages thst were great for example, but they are their own thing snd not comparable to beef, pork, or combination sausages and there is such a wide variety of meat sausages there is no need to compare it to anything specific. It can be its own thing!
a big part is the perception of what you’re used to, I rarely eat meat nowadays and when I do it tends to be game.
My burger patties have gotten to a point where I prefer them to any meat alternative, I’m not saying they’re the same. Outside of serving the same purpose in a burger, but it’s pretty wild I scoff at minced red deer meat now - It just doesn’t carry the same umfph
don’t try and tell me a plant based burger tastes the same as a normal burger
Go to burger king. Get a regular whopper and an impossible whopper. They are literally indistinguishable. Well, until an hour later when the impossible whopper gives you a ton of gas lol.
That’s a straight up case of dumping enough crap on top of each patty that you can’t tell what the hell you are eating anyway.
Try cooking each patty with nothing more than a bit of salt and eat them plain with nothing else, not even a bun, and then tell me you can’t taste the difference.
But then that wouldn’t be a burger…
If you need to hide the taste with all that crap, can it really taste good?
All that crap? You mean buns?
Exactly. I really dislike the taste of beef patty. But i tried a patty looking vegan product. It gave me the same bad taste.
Non vegetarian here. A vegan friend served me some vegan burger and I was absolutely shocked at how good it was. Did it taste exactly like beef? No. However it hit most of the spots to sate a craving I may have for one. The vegan cheese pretty much perfectly emulated american “cheese”, which I don’t personally use, but on a burger has a specific place. I have also introduce TVP into my normal diet. If you cook it right it can act as a very good alternative to crumbled ground beef. My friend makes a vegan chili dip that, if not told, almost everyone just assumes contains beef.
Other vegan cheeses I have tried are awful, even some expensive ones. My best friend doesn’t process animal protein, so was basically forced into eating vegan style. We have made some recipes from chefs online, mostly using various types of mushrooms, that are to emulate steak, that have been very good.
Also, here in Belgium, vegan Gouda is literally cheaper per kilo than actual, cheap Gouda.
My child has dairy allergies.
The fake cheeses are just okay at best.
The “spreads” are good, maybe the fake feta, but generally agree that dsiya is basically only good if you’re early days and struggling, or if your friends insist on making a regular pizza and don’t know how to make that interesting without cheese so here’s some daiya idk, I guess it’s edible.
Daiya smells like dirty socks, especially when heated
My wife is allergic to dairy and it throws me off every time
I mean, plenty of actual cheese is supposed to smell like dirty socks!
We basically only use Chao cheese (not to be confused with Sonic) for the kid these days.
It’s alright. There is also a decent shredded alternative.
Yeah, Daiya is terrible. My wife and one of my kids can;t eat dairy. Violife seems to be one of the better shredded !cheeses, but only when melted.
giving up beef alone should be commended, just for environmental/climate reasons.
Yes, but the post is about veganism, which is the ethical principle that it’s wrong to exploit animals. Cows enslaved for milk are in most cases worse off than those enslaved for their flesh as they are repeatedly impregnated, have their children killed, and are still slaughtered at a fraction of their lifespan just like the flesh cows.
There are certainly some vegans that do it for environmental reasons. Usually a bit of both though, but not all.
most dairy calves are brought to full weight before slaughter, and the life span of a dairy cow is about 5 years.
I’ve never cut beef out entirely but it is surprisingly easy to dramatically reduce how much one uses. Nearly everything that’s good with beef is also good with other meats. I also found doing meatless Mondays to be a great way to experiment with vegetarian/vegan dishes without feeling like I was missing out on anything and then I could take that knowledge into other days
I think a big problem is a lot of people are not confident in their ability to cook. They maybe know how to make a couple of their favorite childhood dishes and a couple things they picked up along the way, maybe. It’s hard to replace a burger with a portabello if you don’t know how to critically approach cooking temps and times so it ends up awful, or trying to cook a passable ratatouille and not knowing how to use a knife or having any spices in the cupboard
So I dont have to be a level 8 vegan to not be a POS?
Despite what a vocal minority on here would have you feel, no, you do not. Every small, positive change should be celebrated
We got a vegan Margherita for us 3hrn my vegan friend was visiting. Couldn’t notice a difference to a normal cheese pizza.
Trump’s mystery meat has made me pause eating beef. Replacing it with mostly pork and chicken
Could always source ethical human milk…and other cheeses.
My Hu-cow sub consents.
ethical human milk
Imagining this overlayed on a man with a big smile on his face.
*(GASGÛL) They were once men; healthy men. Then Tongue the Deceiver gave to them nine rounds of Cheese. Blinded by their hunger, they took them without question, one by one falling into gassness. Now they are slaves to his will. They are the Gasgûl: Fartwraiths, neither living nor dead. At all times they feel the presence of the Cheese, drawn to the power of the lactose. They will never stop farting. *
One Whey to rule them all, One Curd to find them, One Stink to bring them all, and in Aroma blind them
I cut way back on cheese because of the salt, also it’s expensive and high in calories. I could easily go through a large block (or even two--8000 calories!) of sharp cheddar in a week, and that was too much.
This is why I gave up red meat, and processed meat:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/is-red-meat-bad-for-you
Here’s something you may not realize: The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies red meat as a Group 2A carcinogen, which is described as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Carcinogens are substances with cancer-causing potential.
A review of studies on the relationship between red meat and cancer found that eating high levels of red meat is associated with a higher risk of:
Breast cancer
Colorectal cancer
Uterine cancer
Hepatocellular carcinoma
Lung cancerThat’s not all: Processed meats are categorized as level 1 carcinogens. This puts them in the same category as cigarettes and asbestos and means they’re known to increase your risk of cancer.
I mean: being vegan in anything but cheese is also already something.
Just skipping a meal with meat where you would usually have one is already a big step for the individual.
Käsespatzel 🤤🤤🤤
As a non-German living in Germany. Abendbrot goes hard. Like I didn’t expect it to be so enjoyable, but it’s tasty, easy, and cheap. I know it’s traditional to include cold cuts, but I usually just use cheeses and veggies. Fucking tasty
And the veggies pastes, Aufstrich
Your comment made me (a non-German who lived in Germany for a while this year) feel sad for not giving Abendbrot a chance
Kann man Speck rein machen!
I like eggs. And baking.
My eggs are sourced from a dozen of the most spoiled hens I’ve ever seen. They have a half acre of bugs, grass, and weeds to run around in. They are more pets than livestock.
I mean the critique of cheese (honey and eggs, too) is that they, like all foods, are statistically near always sourced from factory farming methods that are harmful to all involved. The only difference is that wheat isn’t sentient enough for ethical consideration. I’m glad your chickens are treated well. I’m glad you ethically source your eggs. Being “one of the good ones” isn’t a defense though; we still need to end factory farming as it exists today.
Im doing what I can to avoid factory farmed food, because for all the talk of ending factory farming I have yet to see any progress outside of angry internet comments. Im going for harm reduction in my own life.
POV: you’re lactose intolerant
Could be worse, I can’t eat lentils or wheat. I mean I can eat wheat but I don’t like to clean my toilet everyday. And lentils make me throw up.
